Adam Stevenson: Vampire's boyfriend, sailor's husband, ghillie dancer, possible bondage bottom, true Scotsman

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Pain and Glory: An aging director recalls his first crush and his first boyfriend, with nostalgia and nudity

For forty years, Pedro Almodóvar has been giving us raucous, irreverent, sometimes funny glimpses into the sexual and social freedom of post-Franco Spain: Bad Education; Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!; A Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown; What Have I Done to Deserve This? He's not exactly a proponent of essentialist gay identity: his gay men are usually there to have affairs with the female focus character, when she's not busy seducing her stepson.  Or maybe she'll seduce her stepson and his boyfriend, or join her sister in having the affair with the gay man.  There will be male nudity, urination, pop culture references, and kitsch. And these aren't comedies. 

Pedro went through similar machinations in his private life, being closeted, then stating that he was bisexual, and finally coming out as gay.  He's been with his partner, Fernando Iglesias, since 2002.

Dolor y gloria, Pain and Glory, is the 74-year old director's swan song, a summary and perhaps a justification of his work, touching on all of his major themes:  "sentimientos, costumbrismo, reencuentros, homosexualidad, sensibilidad, pasión, familia, drogas… "

Almodóvar stand-in Salvador, played by regular star Antonio Banderas, is an aging director, in physical and mental decline.  His chronic pain has kept him from new projects for several years.

Left: A misty memory of Banderas, fully nude in his first film appearance in 1982.

Asked to speak at the restoration of one of his old films, Flavor, he decides to look up the star, Alberto (Asier Etxeandia, left), whom he hasn't seen since the filming.  They had a falling out over Alberto's use of heroin on the set.

While reconciling, and trying heroin himself to ease his chronic pain, he tells the story of his first boyfriend.  

His First Boyfriend:  Director Salvador was in a relationship with Federico, played by Leonardo Sbaraglia, in the 1980s, but ended it due to his heroin use.  

Federico turned out to be one of Almodovar's temporary gay men: he left the "lifestyle" behind, moved to Argentina, married a woman, and had children.

Flavor star Alberto turns this story into a play that draws the attention of the real life Federico.  He returns to Madrid and wants to start the relationship again, but Director Salvador wants to keep the past in the past. 

More after the break

Gavin's Spring Break. With a gym bud, a shower bud, a Taino guy, and the Easter Bunny

Last year Gavin Munn, star of Raising Dion and The Righteous Gemstones, spent spring break in Puerto Rico.  He posted some pics to his Instagram, and I added a few of my own. The naked guys are all over 18.

1. Riding his bike down the hotel hallway

2. That's not a real pelican

3. Golfing on Playa Guajataca.

4. Gym bud

5. Shower bud

6. With Sean William Scott of the American Pie franchise

More spring break after the break

Is There Sex After Death?: A Gideon and Scotty story

This story takes place after Righteous Gemstones Episode 1.8, when Scotty Steele dies.

April 21, 2019. Easter Sunday.

Light. Intense, golden light, surrounding him. Not bright, like sunlight, just warm, comfortable, loving -- how can light be loving? -- like sitting on your mother's lap when you are a kid. Scotty wonders if he is a kid. Maybe he has gone back to the womb?

No, there are others around him, some that he once knew, and loved or hated, some who are strangers. Except they aren't strangers now -- he sees the most important moments of their lives, and they, in turn, see Scotty's. At random, not in chronological or thematic order:

1. Going out to dinner at the Shem Creek Restaurant in Mount Pleasant -- pizza and beer -- and Scotty calls Gideon "Little Lord Fauntleroy." They smile and joke, and hold hands under the table, and the song on the radio, or in his mind, is "You Knock Me Out.” :

The way you talk when you say what you see

Your smile breaking my words – you knock me out.

The way you shake it, baby, the way you get when you get down -- you knock me out 

The memory of the song, of his smile, fills Scotty with so much joy that he he feels like he will burst. He looks around -- or the equivalent when you don't have a body -- and feels the others sharing his joy.

2. The Old Man, Jesse Gemstone,  takes them all out on his yacht, and in the glittering of the waves, while the kids sit in the wading pool -- a pool on a yacht? -- Jesse offers to become his Daddy, and they hug.  

He eases into the hug, actually considering the crazy idea for a moment.  They could just walk away from the scheme to steal the Easter offering from the Salvation Center, $3,000,000, and settle into lives as a good Christian Gemstone and his boyfriend.  

Then he laughs to himself.  No way will the Old Man ever admit Scotty to the family, knowing that his cock  has been down his son's throat or up his ass...sorry, Mom....the fact that Scotty has been intimate with his son every night. Evangelicals hate gay sex even more than they hate thinking for yourself. The Easter Offering plan is the only way they can walk side by side into the future.

3. Driving from California to South Carolina so they can blackmail his father, the world-famous Jesse Gemstone, with a video of his sex-and-drugs party, get even for a childhood of neglect and abuse, and fund their happily-ever-after life in Thailand. They spend the night in a Motel 6 somewhere in New Mexico. Lucy is snoring.  Scotty opens his eyes and sees Gideon, propped up in the other bed, playing on his cell phone, his face illuminated, as if he is already in the plane of endless light.  He must be an angel -- nothing in this shithole world -- sorry, Mom -- could be so beautiful.

He knows that he's going to do it, he's known since the moment they met, but still, Scotty is terrified as he climbs out of his own bed and slides in next to Gideon.  He doesn't look surprised -- maybe he has always known, too.  He puts his cell phone away and scoots down so Scotty can hold him in his arms and kiss him.  

Suddenly the world changes.  Scotty has never been kissed before, not like this. Minutes pass, hours, months, a lifetime. He doesn't even think about doing something more intimate -- is there anything more intimate? -- but eventually Gideon takes the lead rolls him over onto his back, and moves down....he moves down...

To give him the blow job of his life. Well, until later that night.  And the next. With Gideon, his orgasms are so intense that his yells wake half the county, and he has to lie there, panting, exhaused, not sure where he is or who he is, knowing only that they are together.

Cause you and me were meant to be. One heart, one soul, one mind, two of a kind. 

Whoever said that love is blind?  We're partners in crime.

Scotty retreats into himself, embarrassed, but the others draw him back. There's nothing to be embarrassed about now. They've seen the moments of his life, and he's seen theirs.

One of the others has taken on form -- not really a corporeal form, more like a recognizable presence: a young woman with 1980s helmet hair and circular glasses, a little girl in pigtails standing on a country road, a middle-aged woman holding baby Gideon on her lap. She is singing, or music is playing:

We've come so very far, just look at where we are -- What once was a dream is now a sweet memory.

I'll see you again with the valley's warm wind, I'll see you some way, but it's toodles today

Scotty knows who she is -- Aimee-Leigh Gemstone, the Gospel singer that his mom liked so much. Eli Gemstone's wife, Jesse's mother, Gideon's grandmother!

More memories emerge, and with them the joy turns to pain.  Scotty never hit Gideon, except for two fights where he got worse than he gave, and the sex was always consensual -- he was forced, by his cousin, by his tenth grade teacher, by a crazy chick in a dive bar. so he always made sure that the cocksucker -- sorry, gay guy -- was into it.  But he wasn't always loving.  He belittled Gideon, called him names, yelled, even threatened.  He thought that the only way to keep someone with him was by making them feel small and scared.

Creeper got mad and angry eyes – one look from him can paralyze.

Upon his lips the taste of pain, venom kiss of love insane

He got a rod beneath his coat – he gonna ram it right down your throat.

Make you grovel on the floor, spit up and scream and beg for more

Scotty retreats into himself, hating himself for hurting so many people, fearful that Gideon's grandmother has come to judge him. But all he feels from Aimee-Leigh is love.  She nods -- or its equivalent -- and the memory continues.

 On Easter morning, Gideon comes down the elevator alone and says "It's over." He chose the ritzy Gemstone world over the dream of Thailand, the Old Man over the love of his life. The smiles, holding hands under the table, the kissing, the orgasms that burst across the universe -- all ignored.  But Gideon isn't the one who ignored it -- Scotty could have said "It's ok, I don't want the money, all I need is to be by your side."  He didn't.  

After that Scotty sees nothing but red rage.  He retrieves his van, beats up Granddad Eli, forces Gideon and Jesse to open the vault, ties them up. He yells "You made your choice, and you broke my heart!" Then he zooms away from the estate, not sure where he is going, nowhere, anywhere, into the abyss. He doesn't care; his life is over already.

Aimee-Leigh waits patiently for his despair to wash through the others.  Then she asks "Are you ready to go, darlin?  We've got work to do."

Calling him "darlin'," as if she is really his grandmother! Wait -- of course she is.  There are no lies in the endless light. "But how?  He must hate me.  There's no coming back from what I've done to him."

"He's already forgiven you.  But you need to forgive him."

More after the break